


Human Ransom Note

by antsinmyeyesjohnson



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 15:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5010172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antsinmyeyesjohnson/pseuds/antsinmyeyesjohnson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's what's inside that counts in this one, Broh! </p><p>So to speak, Broh!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Skirmish

**Author's Note:**

> This one used to be called "It's a Wonderful Rick", before I grew a brain, a heart, and a dick

The sky was an inverted, bruising black bowl. Shreds of lightning scraped across its surface and it was all hurtling down on the Smith family's house in a way that Jerry wanted to cry about. 

"C'mon Jerry," he said to himself, peeping from between the kitchen blinds and into the thunderdome of his yard, sweating bullets. Beth was at the horse hospital, which - on the one hand - meant that nobody was spite-drinking in the bedroom about life choices they'd made in the 80s, but - on the other hand - meant there was nobody he could find in the house to make him feel better about the roof peeling off like the lid of a tin can and probably being tipped out into the sky to die inside a cloud. 

Where was everybody? 

Jerry invoked his own masculinity, frowning. He bet stupid _Davyn_ jerked off about this kind of weather. He could picture muscular, sweatily tan Davyn pulling his surgical mask down past his mouth and breathing something thinly veiled and sexy to Beth about the primal urges that thunder awoke in him; smelling like testosterone and wrist deep in a stinking open horse. Jerry jittered, opening and closing a clammy fist. 

The sky broke and dropped a gutterball of thunder down into the neighbourhood. A tangle of car alarms piped like baby birds in the street and Jerry scuttled into the living room, hiding in the arms of the doorway arch. 

From there, Jerry could just spy a long leg jutting out into the yard through the sweating screen door. Beth's father was outside, like the maniac he was - _probably trying to find a way to get himself electrocuted_ \- Jerry thought, appalled, distaste rising like bile in his throat. The need for solace in human contact won out, though, and he padded guiltily across the room in his socks like a child out of bed late with nightmares. He looked sideways at Rick through the door, not (and never) quite ready. 

Rick was sunk back on the old wreck of a couch that leant on the back porch, looking out into the storm spray with his legs stretched out onto a sad little table that barely accommodated both his shoes and a thickly steaming pot of black coffee. To his left sat - Jerry blinked - a winter coated, mittened Summer, sipping companionably from a Garfield mug with her legs stuffed under her. Jerry scooted closer, curious... 

"Jerry, you're being a menace," Rick said mildly, without looking over. He flicked at a tuft of loose threads where his arm was resting, slung over the shoulder of the couch. "Stop menacing me." 

Summer squeezed around to Jerry inside her jacket and mouthed "Hey!" She pressed a mittened _shhh_ gesture to her mouth. Then she waved, smiling a little painfully - like you might at an errant Jehovah's Witness, or a very ugly baby. He raised a hand to wave back, but she'd already turned away and it flapped uselessly against the window. 

A bright zipper of lightning peeled down in the distance. Summer, pink-faced, leant down and poured herself a new cup; only half-watching as she looked up into the sky, squinting happily into the onslaught. Rick wordlessly jostled her with his own empty mug, nosing it into her shoulder and the side of her head with feigned earnestness.

Marshmallowing back around with some effort, Summer laughed silently and tipped Rick a theatrical overfill. He swore and spidered to rearrange himself.

"Oh my god, _careful_ ," Summer teased. Rick, with a supreme look of petulance, blew a thin spray of coffee from across the top of his mug and into her ear. "Yeah, you like that?" he asked pleasantly, smirking at her scandalized gasp and bapping away a poorly-aimed slap with the side of his forearm. 

Jerry took in the scene with a mounting sulkiness. Rick looked obstinate and cheerful, a stab of happy lightning next to Summer, a puffy little cloud. Inside the wet belly of the storm, a strange cosmic empathy hung beating in the air, doming over his daughter and father-in-law, sealed like a bell jar. Like that Stephen King movie... _The Jar_?? Jerry squinted. 

He almost knew better than to try when they were like this - it was the same as when Rick and Morty were sequestered on the couch together watching gibberish alien infomercials; or when all three came up from the garage looking wall-eyed and remote, smelling like space and talking under their breaths to one another. Jerry-Free Zones. 

Whatever. This was fine... It wasn't like Summer and Rick had a monopoly on _fun_ in the Smith household--

Throwing caution almost literally to the wind, Jerry poked his head outside into a freezing slap of air.

"Is Morty out here?" 

Jerry's over-loud voice sailed over and fell heavily into the couch. Rick and Summer both cringed, Rick white-knuckling his grip on the shoulder of the sofa.

Now that he was partially outside, Jerry could tell his question was stupid. On Rick's other side, tucked under his elbow, stirred a sleeping Morty - almost completely submerged under an ugly, fluffy blanket with ponies printed on it (Summer's, Jerry guessed). 

"Hmmmm?" Morty blinked. He shouldered some dribble off his chin and made a weak attempt at pushing himself up on an elbow, eyes scrolling weirdly. 

"Uuuuuup-bup-bup!" Rick clamped a quick, stern hand over Morty's face and used it to push him back down. "Your Mom forgot to put Jerry's thunder jacket on before she left, Morty," Rick glared pointedly over his shoulder. _"That's all._ "

"Sorry!" Jerry put his hands up, receding slightly. "Just wanted to, ah,--" He paused. "You _okay_ Morty?"

"I swear to God, Jerry-" Rick swung his cup to Summer - who almost fumbled it - and reached into his coat, coming out with his portal gun and pointing it at Jerry like a pistol; his other hand still tamping Morty down into all the pretty horses. 

"Look, Dad -" Summer cut in diplomatically, looking edgeways at Rick, "Morty's sleeping off some stuff. Can we do this some other time...?" 

But Rick was already up, stalking Jerry back into the house and up against a lamp. He squeezed a portal onto the nearest wall and pointed sharply with the gun. 

"Make yourself useful for once in your life, Jerry. Go hang out for a few hours." Rick ripped a coupon from a little square book with his teeth, and stuffed it inside Jerry's collar. "Or longer. Go ham."

"This is my house!" Jerry looked frenzied, blindly grabbing inside his shirt at the crumpled paper. Rick took a long step forward, though, and Jerry, disarmed, backed himself straight into the portal's sucking mouth. It whirlpooled and disappeared into itself, leaving Rick staring directly into a framed photo of Jerry, bobbing for apples at a fair. A curling sticker speech bubble loomed over his submerged head. "HUNGRY FOR APPLES???" Photo-Jerry asked himself, in Jerry's own careful, childish handwriting. 

" _Jesus_."

Rick swung back outside, swearing into a rumble of thunder. A pink-eyed but awake Morty blinked up at him, glazed-over and messy inside his rug. Summer shrugged, smile a little grim. 

Rick pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes. 

"O-kay. Bed, Morty," He pointed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited this lil fella on 28/2/17 which is a bizarre reflection of my priorities i guess


	2. If a Slight Distraction Can Get You Paid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who only gets stuff done when they're busy procrastinating for something else? (Me. It's me.)

"So, uh..." Summer addressed the bowl in her lap. "What's actually wrong with him?"

Next to her, splay-kneed on the living room couch, Rick squinted to inspect the half-bitten stump end of a spring roll. He was rounding up to visibly drunk, and sitting close enough that Summer found herself periodically shaking little shards of his food off her sleeve. With half-lidded disinterest still aimed towards the television, he lifted a shoulder in a shrug.

"No offense, Summer, but -- you piss in my genepool once, shame on you. You pi- you do it twice, shame on me, y'know?" He cocked the spring roll thoughtfully, a strand of cabbage unravelling from the end and onto Summer's sock. 

The smell of Rick's drying clothes spun in a hot purposeful orbit across the sofa with ebbing obviousness, and Summer - shaking her head - briefly and powerfully imagined an aromatherapy candle scented How Could my Dog Have Possibly Rolled in Both Machine Grease and Uncapped Permanent Markers Simultaneously?

"Also," Rick chewed. "Whenever he washes cups he leaves them rim-down to dry on a non-porous surface so aaaaall the condensation gets trapped inside -- which may seem like a-a drop in the ocean, but... What?" He blinked over at the agitated hand on his shoulder. Summer dragged the fingers of her other hand down her face.

"OH my God. Not Dad, Morty. Focus."

Rick blinked again slowly, a purposefully tepid smile floating down to arrange itself on his face. "Morty? He's fine. Comparatively speaking, o-obviously."

Summer's eyebrows drew up into an unconvinced V. 

"Grandpa Rick, he looks like you found him sleeping in an alleyway."

Rick coughed a laugh in acknowledgement. It was true - half-shepherding, half-carrying Morty up the stairs to bed an hour prior had been akin to steering a sedated horse across a busy freeway. The little idiot clattered onto his bed and resisted being tucked between his sheets so vehemently that Rick had pinned him down and swaddled him in his quilt like a cholic newborn. 

"Stay," he'd warned with a raised finger, and Morty tipped away to face the wall, a sullen burrito. 

 

"I'll go look in on him in a minute," Rick said, waving an airy hand towards Summer's concern, and then the television. "After Beaches." 

Summer actually laughed, despite herself. "Uh, this is definitely Steel Magnolias, you maniac." Bette Midler wasn't even in this.

Rick rolled his head onto his shoulder and slid a deceptively clear look across the shoulder of the couch. "I'd know that if you'd sss-- stop fussing for half--half a second," he said, cocking an insincere eyebrow at her stern expression and popping the tab on a can of beer. "Jeesus," he said, taking a pull and swallowing, "Sally Field has looked fu-uhcking identical for thirty, forty years?? She-E-lby was right though," patting his belly affirmatively after a belch. "That is a big brown football helmet." 

"Grandpa," Summer gripped his knee for emphasis and he groaned irritably, flopping his head towards her again and looking very put-upon. "If you're not gonna tell me what's wrong with him, at least promise me he's gonna be okay." She squeezed his knee again, as though it was the tail of his skittish attention span. 

Rick closed his eyes around the likelihood of getting to see any of Daryl Hannah without the revolting peripheral accompaniment of a sulking Summer and took another swallow of his beer. With his eyes still closed, a curling fist of irritation clenching in his gut, he heard himself ask, "Do I look worried to you, Summer? I told you he's fine." 

Summer opened her mouth to respond, but Rick stood, and cut over the top with a sudden, perilous energy that made Summer shrink. "He's going to look like dogshit until at least tomorrow night. If he's still looking gross by then, you absolutely have permission to get aaaall up in my ass about it. Until then--" he stepped behind the couch and leant over so that he was speaking close to Summer's ear, "I want you to think about how it could be that I know that - outside of me being much, much smarter than you." Summer turned and watched as he stalked toward the staircase. 

"You're a bright girl, you'll figure it out," he said over his shoulder, with all the sincerity with which you might compliment someone's prized pet potato. 

Summer sighed a little guiltily and reached for the remote. Asshole.


End file.
